


even if it burns

by lonelyghosts



Series: you, yourself, your own [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Trans Edelgard von Hresvelg, Trans Female Character, Trans Hubert von Vestra, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, all the edel backstory warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27567364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelyghosts/pseuds/lonelyghosts
Summary: Edelgard had known she was a girl since she was seven years old.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & Hubert von Vestra
Series: you, yourself, your own [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015026
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	even if it burns

**Author's Note:**

> trans edelgard rights
> 
> anyways this is part of a 'Thoughts On Trans Fe3h Characters' series, and will feature my trans hcs in abundance. lore to know: adrestia is Okay about trans ppl, the leicester alliance varies from duchy to duchy, and faerghus sucks. the church is also pretty terrible about it.

Edelgard had known she was a girl since she was seven years old.

It was a discovery that could be credited to many factors- her older sister, Gisela, who, though she did not care much for Edelgard, was an avid researcher who could never resist the allure of answering a question. Her possession of that quality that adults cooed over and called precociousness and her peers turned their noses up at and called arrogance, which Hubert named determination. And of course, Hubert.

It was a combination of all these factors that allowed her to realize she was a girl. If not for Hubert, she never would have met someone like her own dark mirror so young; a boy with the soft curves and long hair she lacked, who was so clearly a boy no matter the ways the world spit that awful wrong name like a curse at his feet. If not for Gisela, she would not have been able to ask about it to someone who would hunt down books that explained the concept of gender at length, presenting them to Edelgard with all the satisfaction of a cat who had butchered a canary. Had it not been for her determination, she would never have been able to convince those around her to listen to her- so young, still- when she said she was a girl. 

But she was a princess, and the delight of her father's eye. Ionius's power was a waning thing, in those days, but in this small and momentous matter he was determined, at least, to give Edelgard some measure of happiness. She would always love him, despite the guilty stifled anger she felt some days at his powerlessness, at how he had not fought harder to save them, because of this: her mouth forming the truth of herself, and his arms wrapped around her in comfort. 

It was better than it could have been, in the end. The Adrestian Empire was not Faerghus, at least. There was some history of those like her in its books, and though the announcement of her new name and gender was a scandal in some circles, most accepted it peacefully and moved on with their lives.

As a child, she'd sat by Hubert's side and told him that someday they'd break the bonds that their bodies placed upon them. It had been their biggest concern, at the time- to turn their bodies into something that did not hurt. They'd spent hours poring over books full of spells, brows furrowed over the ones they thought might work easiest. 

There had been one found in those halcyon days, only a few weeks before the coup that had stripped Edelgard's father of all his power and sent her and Anselma running to Faerghus for safety. It had proposed the possibility of switching their two bodies; a plan that Hubert had been intrigued by despite himself. They'd bookmarked it, told themselves they'd look more deeply into it later.

Of course, there was no later. Edelgard left the palace under cover of darkness, the gaze of her uncle hot on the back of her neck. There was no time for goodbyes to the boy who loved her so dearly and understood her in the way no one else quite seemed to. There were no letters she could send, no explanations. Only the view from the carriage as she stared at her home and wondered if she'd ever see her family again.

Faerghus was cold and cruel and she hated it. Arundel had never been a supporter of her transition, but when they crossed the border he'd taken her hand and told her to never let anyone know about the truth of her girlhood. It had to remain a secret, he told her, and she'd nodded, quiet, head bowed, fear like cold knives in each of her teeth. 

The only good thing about Faerghus had been Sacha, in the end. Sacha who was so much like Hubert in some ways it ached. Her only friend in that place, there, with that long blonde hair and those blue eyes and a strange understanding. The only person in Faerghus who had ever known the truth about her body, even if it had been a discovery made entirely by accident; the only person who made those dread days better, when Arundel became more and more distant and Cornelia looked at her in that awful way that made her skin crawl. Those stolen moments with Sascha were all she had- dancing in the sunlight, hands on her waist as she guided the two of them through each movement, twirling in strong arms and laughing to the sound of violins. A hand in her own on hard days. A dagger, finally, pressed into her palm. To cut her own path.

And then the carriage home.

There was no time to greet Hubert, in the end. They had barely stepped foot inside the palace before a cloth pressed itself to her mouth, tasting sickly sweet in her nose. There was the sound of screaming that could have been her own, and fear hitching with betrayal in her chest, and then everything went dark to the cruel sound of her uncle's laughter ringing off the walls of this place that had once and never could again be home.

After that, her memories grow hazy and fragmented. Time is strange in the little cells they keep her in with her siblings. One moment she is alone, and the next the others all around her; in some moments they are dead, or dying, and in others she has arms around her shoulders, protecting her from the hands that pull her out to the place that only means pain as they cut her open and remake her.

She remembers pain. She remembers hands inside her body pulling things out and cuts in parts of her that she'd never known could be reached. She remembers flames against her face and ice in the marrow of her bones. She remembers hurt.

She doesn't remember who died first. She remembers Adelaide was last- her sweet older sister, oldest of them all, who had stroked her cheek in the dark as she cried bitterly against her chest, clutching to her ragged clothes in the cold. She remembers falling asleep in Adelaide's arms to the sound of a raspy voice singing a barely-familiar hymn. She remembers waking up in cold arms, her cheek laid against a cooling corpse. Her sister's eyes had been glassy and empty and they had not even given her the dignity of a send off, one guard dragging her from the cell as the other picked up her sister like a rag doll and carried her to some place she would never return from as Edelgard shrieked and shrieked and begged until there was pain at the back of her skull and then: darkness. 

She awoke to the sound of triumph as they marveled over the success that was her body. She still ached, with every part of her, too much, her mind hazy as she wept on that operating table, stitches fresh on every inch of her body, all alone.

When they brought her back to the palace she was still trembling. She screamed to see herself in the mirror- that shock of white hair cropped so close to her head, the scars littering her arms and chest and stomach and legs and feet, all over her. This body that she had so long hated made even more grotesque. She realized, staring at this starved reflection of herself, she would never be able to use that spell with Hubert. Not if she didn't want to subject him to the painful existence that she would be forced to live now.

There were no more gentle sunlit days, after that. Edelgard rose from the darkness of her palace's dungeons with a destined crown, a ticking clock in her heart, and a vow: to destroy every iota of the system that had killed her siblings. To remake this cursed and corrupted world until no one ever has to feel even a fraction of this pain. 

She swears this to Hubert in the darkness of her chambers, hands pressed together with red slicking their palms in a blood pact that neither of them will ever break. Edelgard looks into his eyes and knows deep in her tainted bones: together, they are going to make a world greater than the one before it.


End file.
